“No,” she said, “you are wrong.” Then a sort of tension came over her, she raised her face like the pythoness inspired with oracles, and went on, in rhapsodic manner: “Il Sandro mi scrive che ha accolto il più grande entusiasmo, tutti i giovani, e fanciulle e ragazzi, sono tutti—” She went on in Italian, as if, in thinking of the Italians she thought in their language.
He listened with a shade of distaste to her rhapsody, then he said:
“For all that, I don’t like it. Their nationalism is just industrialism—that and a shallow jealousy I detest so much.”
“I think you are wrong—I think you are wrong—” said Hermione. “It seems to me purely spontaneous and beautiful, the modern Italian’s passion, for it is a passion, for Italy, l’Italia—”
“Do you know Italy well?” Ursula asked of Hermione. Hermione hated to be broken in upon in this manner. Yet she answered mildly:
“Yes, pretty well. I spent several years of my girlhood there, with my mother. My mother died in Florence.”
“Oh.”
There was a pause, painful to Ursula and to Birkin. Hermione however seemed abstracted and calm. Birkin was white, his eyes glowed as if he were in a fever, he was far too over-wrought. How Ursula suffered in this tense atmosphere of strained wills! Her head seemed bound round by iron bands.
Birkin rang the bell for tea. They could not wait for Gudrun any longer. When the door was opened, the cat walked in.
“Micio! Micio!” called Hermione, in her slow, deliberate sing-song. The young cat turned to look at her, then, with his slow and stately walk he advanced to her side.